Virtual Reality (VR) refers to a technology which allows a user to interact within a computer-simulated environment. Generally, this computer-simulated environment can relate to a real or imagined scenario. Current VR environments are primarily visual experiences which are displayed either via a monitor or through specialized stereoscopic displays (e.g., goggles). In addition to visual effects, some simulations include additional sensory information, for example, audible or vibratory sensations. More advanced, ‘haptic’ systems now include tactile information, generally known as ‘force feedback,’ in many gaming applications.
Today, users most often interact with a VR environment by way of standard input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, joystick, trackball or other navigational device. As well, multimodal devices such as a specialized haptic wired glove are used to interact with and within the VR environment.
Recent developments in VR have been directed to three-dimensional (3D) gaming environments. Generally, a ‘virtual world’ is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. An ‘avatar’ refers to a representation of a user usually employed by way of a computer network to depict a user. An avatar can be a 3D model used in computer games, a two-dimensional image (e.g., icon) used within Internet and other community forums (e.g., chat rooms) as well as text constructs usually found on early systems. Thus, presence within the 3D virtual world is most often represented in the form of two or 3D graphical representations of users (or other graphical or text-based avatars).
Today, nature and technology are equally integrated into 3D virtual worlds in order to enhance the reality of the environment. For example, actual topology, gravity, weather, actions and communications are able to be expressed within these virtual worlds thereby enhancing the reality of the user experience. Although early virtual world systems employed text as the means of communication, today, real-time audio (e.g., voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP)) is most often used to enhance communications.
Although the technological advances in graphics and communications have vastly improved the quality of the virtual worlds, these virtual environments have been centered around the gaming industry. As such, users control actions and the system is preprogrammed with responses to those actions.
Somewhat similar to VR, ‘Augmented Reality’ (AR) most often relates to a field of computer research that describes the combination of real world and computer generated data. Conventionally, AR employs with the use of video imagery which is digitally processed and ‘augmented’ with the addition of computer-generated graphics. Traditional uses of AR (and VR) have been primarily focused around the gaming industry.
Most often, conventional AR systems employed specially-designed translucent goggles. These goggles enable a user to see the real world as well as computer-generated images projected atop of the real world vision. These systems attempt to combine real world vision with a virtual world. Unfortunately, traditional systems fall short in their ability to leverage the vast amount of information and data now available to users.